Three of the pieces of sculpture in the Museum are said by Sloane[3] to have been derived from the Arundel Collection, which was the first great collection of classical antiques formed in this country. Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel (1585-1646), was the first Englishman who employed agents to collect for him in Greece and the Greek Islands, as well as in Italy. The collection thus formed was broken up in the reign of Charles II. The inscriptions were given by Henry Howard, afterwards sixth Duke of Norfolk, to the University of Oxford in 1667. The sculptures were scattered. A part passed through the hands of the Earls of Pomfret to the University of Oxford, while others were lost, or dispersed among private collectors.[4] The few examples named above thus found their way into the original collection of the British Museum. A more important fragment, however, from the Arundel Collection was added to the Museum at an early date, namely the bronze head, formerly known as Homer,[5] which was presented by the ninth Earl of Exeter in 1760. This head had previously been in the collection of Dr. Richard Mead,[6] physician and antiquary (1673-1754), and was sold with his collection in 1754.[7]
Between the foundation of the British Museum in 1753 and the accession of the Townley Collection in 1805, the collection of sculpture made but slow progress. The first donor of sculpture was Thomas Hollis (1720-1774), of Corscombe, in Dorsetshire, a collector, and benefactor to several branches of the Museum. In 1757 Hollis gave a collection of antiquities, including several marbles, chiefly small busts and inscriptions.[8] In 1764 he gave a Greek relief, which cannot be identified, and in 1765 a marble head of a Faun.
In 1772 Matthew Duane (lawyer and antiquary, 1707-1785) joined in a gift of sculptures with Thomas Tyrwhitt (1720-1786), a scholar, who also bequeathed his library of classical authors to the British Museum. The sculptures in question[9] were purchased by the donors at an auction in London,[10] in order that they might be put in a place of safety.
The year 1772 is also noteworthy as the date of the first Parliamentary grant for the augmentation of the Museum collection. The House of Commons in that year voted a sum of £8410 for the purchase of the valuable museum of antiquities which had been formed by Sir William Hamilton (1730-1803), British Ambassador at Naples, 1764-1800. The vases formed the most important section, but the collection also contained several sculptures in the round and in relief.[11] On the other hand a square altar with reliefs[12] was presented by Sir W. Hamilton in 1776, and perhaps also a head of Heracles.[13] A colossal foot of Apollo[14] was given in 1784.
In 1780 an interesting relief, No. 750, was presented by Sir Joseph Banks, and Col. the Hon. A. C. Fraser, of Lovat (1736-1815). Sir Joseph Banks (1743-1820), traveller, botanist, and President of the Royal Society, was a great benefactor to the Library and Botanical collections, but his gifts of sculpture were limited to this relief, and to a relief representing Jupiter and Ceres, presented in 1809.
Charles Townley gave two marble fountains[15] in 1786, but his main collections were not added to the Museum till after his death. A valuable gift was received from the Society of Dilettanti, about 1795, consisting of the sculptures and inscriptions collected by the expedition to Ionia which had been sent out by that Society in 1764, under the direction of Dr. Richard Chandler. The collection included several Attic reliefs,[16] and some important inscriptions, among them the well-known report on the progress of the Erechtheion.[17] In 1870 the same Society presented the fruits of its excavations at Prienè, conducted by Mr. R. P. Pullan.
Two Roman portrait statues, of inferior merit, which had passed into the hands of the British at the Capitulation of Alexandria, in 1800, were placed in the Department of Antiquities, in 1802.
The collection of sculpture which had thus slowly come into existence during the first fifty years of the Museum's history, received its most brilliant accessions during the first quarter of the present century.
The great collection that had been formed by Charles Townley[18] was purchased in 1805 by Act of Parliament, 45 Geo. III. cap. 127, for £20,000, a sum greatly below the value of the sculptures. Charles Townley (1737-1805), of Townley, in Lancashire, acquired a large part of his marbles, during a residence in Italy, between 1768 and 1772, but continued collecting, after his return to England. The chief sources from which he formed his museum were the following: (1) the older Roman collections, from which Townley made numerous purchases; (2) the excavations carried on by Gavin Hamilton, a Scotch painter living in Rome (died 1797), and by Thomas Jenkins, an English banker; (3) occasional purchases from older English collections. Thus the relief of Exakestes[19] was derived from the collection of Dr. Richard Mead (see above). The relief of Xanthippos[20] had been brought to England by Dr. Anthony Askew, a physician, who visited Athens and the East, about 1747, and compiled a manuscript volume of inscriptions, now in the British Museum (Burney MSS., No. 402). Several pieces[21] were also obtained from the collection formed at Wimbledon by Lyde Browne, a virtuoso and Director of the Bank of England, who died in 1787.